Over Reaction?

So those remedies we’ve been taking for decades to help with cold and flu symptoms are going to be banned.

Popular cold and flu medicines have been banned in the UK over fears they could trigger deadly allergic reactions, leaving many Brits wondering how to treat their symptoms.

But Dr Hilary Jones has shared how people can manage their coughs without turning to pholcodine, which the UK’s medicines regulator says raises the risk of life-threatening anaphylaxis among patients put under general anaesthetic.

So the risk – the vanishingly tiny risk – even they admit this – is to someone who has taken one of these remedies and is to go under a general anaesthetic. So, er, don’t take them if you are going under an anaesthetic and declare them if you weren’t planning it.

But, no, because of this vanishingly tiny risk, they are banning them. Talk about an inability to assess and manage risk. But, they have form as we saw three years ago. The medical profession and the pharmaceutical companies have demonstrably shown us that they cannot be trusted.

Explaining the move, Dr Jones said: ‘Pholcodine has been around for 70 years. It’s a very common ingredient and I have to say that this is a precaution. The risk of this anaphylactic reaction is very, very small.

‘However, safety is paramount and that’s why the MHRA have decided to withdraw these things from the shelves.’

Yup, a massive over reaction. See also, covid. Fuckwits.

However, coercing millions to take a relatively untried medical intervention without fully understanding the risks was a-okay. Morons.

15 Comments

  1. I’ll bet it’s nothing to do with allergic reactions – that’s an excuse. I’ll bet these products are precursors for meth. Otherwise how has it not been an issue until now?

    • ‘However, safety is paramount and that’s why the MHRA have decided to withdraw these things from the shelves.’ Thereby, once again, removing our own choice in assessing risk. Nanny knows best. … but of course Nanny doesn’t know best. Time and again they get it completely wrong. Watch them sponsor a ‘government approved’, ‘safe and effective’ alternative…?

  2. Or perhaps, by the same logic:

    “However, safety is paramount and that’s why the MHRA have decided to withdraw every medicine and many foods from the shelves.

    This does increase the risk of ill health and starvation, but we must be more careful to avoid blame.”
    {/sarcasm}

  3. ’Yup, a massive over reaction. See also, covid.’

    Don’t need to go as far back as Covid. See also, gas/air mixture for women giving birth, which has been classed a risk to midwives AND a ‘greenhouse gas’! And removed from some hospitals as a result.

    • Had that with first 2 children, made no difference whatsoever, mind you ex floated out the room (TG).
      Last one didn’t bother, same as the others.

    • Don’t the vast majority of deaths take place in hospital?
      Should also be banned…
      Though given the godawful state of the nhs, it would probably improve things.

  4. Must admit that I find Jakeman’s Throat and Chest lozenges as good as, and a lot cheaper than, any proprietary cold treatment.

  5. OT but there seems to have been some interesting developments in the Netherlands where the government wanted to follow the massive success in Sri Lanka by banning fertiliser. The populist Rather Not Starve party has been voted in.

  6. We all know that drugs that are patent expired instantly become too dangerous to be taken.
    Are we still allowed chicken soup?

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